Law centres to challenge award of contract for discrimination helpline to G4S

The Law Centres Network is to challenge the Government’s award of a contract for operating the national discrimination advice helpline to G4S.

The LCN said it would ask the High Court to quash the G4S contract and for a new tender to be run, “correcting faults in the previous contracting process”.

Its grounds of challenge in the letter before action include that the Government failed to:

• properly assess the shortcomings of the Equality Advisory and Support Service with stakeholders;
• properly consider how to reform EASS with the equalities watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission;
• properly consider G4S’s equality and human rights record in other public services it has delivered.

Law firm Deighton Pierce Glynn is acting for the LCN. Solicitor Daniel Carey said: “This case concerns the legal duty on the government to assess the equalities impact of procurement decisions. One would expect a high degree of compliance where the Government Equalities Office was the decision maker and the service being procured was an equalities advice line.”

A petition against awarding the EASS contract to G4S has received nearly 60,000 signatures.

A joint letter has also been sent by more than 40 organisations to the chairs of the Women and Equalities Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights, calling for a parliamentary inquiry.

The House of Lords is meanwhile set to discuss EASS, in debating a recent report by the Equality Act and Disability Select Committee. The report recommended that EASS be managed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, returning to the position before October 2012, but the Government has rejected this recommendation.

Nimrod Ben-Cnaan, head of policy at the Law Centres Network, said: “This legal action is about ensuring access to justice for some of the most disadvantaged and often vulnerable people in society. It is already difficult for people to access appropriate advice on discrimination, which is a complex area of law. Our concern, also raised in the joint letter, is that government does all it should to ensure that the most suitable provider is chosen, and that the service is effective.”